


You'll Not Feel the Drowning

by nilchance



Series: hunter!AU [1]
Category: EverymanHYBRID, Slender Man Mythos, Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 11:04:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nilchance/pseuds/nilchance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There will be other monsters. (Post-series AU: Evan and Alex become hunters. Off-screen character deaths referenced.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	You'll Not Feel the Drowning

There is a world where Alex's parents survived.

There is a world where the Man never found them that night, appearing through a rupture in the world.

There's a world where the Man never stood above him, seeming to look at him behind that blank face, and then held out his hand for Alex to take.

There's a world where Jeff never shoved Alex out of the way and took the Man's hand, instead.

It's the world next door, and the world on his other side. They fold out in front of Alex like a hand of cards, so close that he can see them sometimes. He's not sure why he can see them, but he has since his parents' funeral. The antipsychotics helped him not to look, but he still feels it there, a million possible moments that could've happened differently, a shuffling in the night like the crisp whisper of a suit.

The thing is, Alex isn't in any of those other worlds. He exists in this one, the wild card, watching his brother live without him. In those worlds where Alex never happened, Jeff usually survives.

So yeah. He's a little crazy.

Discard. Shuffle. Repeat.  
****  
The Rake is definitely dead; they stand shivering in the January cold, watching its body steam and then stop as it cools. Their blood drops into the snow caked around them, red blotches against the black stinking gore that the Rake spilled everywhere when Evan gutted it.

Time passes in jolts and creeps, the way it does when the Man puts in an appearance. Alex hasn't seen Him, though. Hasn't heard any sirens. Maybe it's all the blood he's lost.

Jeff doesn't appear from behind the ruined corpse like he does in Alex's dreams, the one where he's not dead, the one where it's just a misunderstanding.

Evan spits out a curse and lurches forward, kneeling to wrench his knife out of the Rake's corpse. It's the knife that they all bought him the last Christmas, before it was just the two of them. Evan's face is wet, and not just with blood. Alex wonders if Evan was hoping he'd die in the last fight, too, and he knows he'll never ask.

Without drying his face, Evan limps over and knocks his closed fist against Alex's chest. "C'mon, before both of us bleed to death out here," he rasps, more Habit than human, and pushes past him to start the long walk back to the car.

Alex looks out into the forest, the skinny dead trees, and turns to follow Evan.

There will be other monsters.  
***  
They stitch each other up in the hotel room.

Evan is better at stitches, making them small and neat like his signature on Alex's skin. He's left those trails all over Alex's body in the last six months. The tug and slide of the repurposed sewing needle hurts like hell. The wound's on Alex's thigh, and Evan's a little fucked up from the whiskey they use as anesthetic. They've learned to triage after the vampire debacle, passing the needle back and forth along with the bottle.

"It's not that bad," Alex complains again. "That cut on your head--"

"It's right by your femoral, dude. Mine's just bleeding like a bitch because it's a scalp wound." Evan closes Alex's fingers around the bottle, their hands sticking together in a way that makes Alex a little queasy. "Shut up and drink up."

Alex grunts and takes a swig. Evan is a bad influence, Jeff said; little did he know. Fucker shouldn't have died if he wanted a say.

The needle again. He chokes a little on the burn of the whiskey, swallows so he doesn't spray it everywhere like a kid who can't handle his alcohol. He's killed vampires and werewolves and things he doesn't know the name of because nobody made a videogame about it. He's a hunter, even if that's a douchetastic name for it. Somebody has to look out for the stupid kids on the Internet who taunt monsters they don’t believe in, the ones who post on 4-chan at obscene hours to ask for help that won’t come. If somebody like them had been out there, maybe things wouldn’t have gone so wrong.

Most of the hunters they’ve met write him and Evan off like they’re already dead.

Evan's hand slows and then stills. For a second, Alex thinks the stitches are done. He tries to stretch, testing the thread to see if it'll hold through the night, and Evan tightens his grip until Alex's knee creaks in protest. A car pulls into their motel lot, its headlights reflecting red in Evan's eyes like a cat's.

Habit leans down, still holding Alex's eyes, and touches his tongue to the edge of the wound. Its mouth (Evan's mouth) feels hot, or maybe that's the fact that Habit might be satisfied with one taste or might tear out the stitches with its teeth.

They salted the doors and chalked a Devil's Trap around the bed, but they've never field-tested the trap. Even if works, that only means that Habit won't kill everybody in the hotel. Doesn't help Alex much, since he's already inside.

Alex inhales a shaky breath and reaches for the gun on the nightstand, because the rock salt will hurt Evan less than waking up next to a body, but Evan shudders and shakes his head to clear it.

"Blerk," Evan says, and turns to spit on the carpet. "Ugh. Fucking goddamn stupid demon cocksucker bastard."

Switching his reach mid-stream, like it never occurred to him to pull the gun, Alex grabs the capped syringe instead. Evan mutters and rolls onto his back, shoving his arm at Alex for the injection.

The track marks on the inside of Evan's arm have started to fade in clusters, because the demon fought harder in the beginning. Now it surged up when it thought they weren't watching, when Evan was tired or angry or both, when they ran out of the Dead Sea salt or the holy water or the sedatives. Coincidentally, the scars look like a smiling Cheshire cat.

A couple minutes after the injection, Evan says to the ceiling, "Sorry."

Alex socks Evan in the face with a pillow. Evan shuts up about it, his restlessness betrayed only by the jitter of his foot as Alex stitches the scalp wound. Knowing it's coming, Alex just sews and wishes he'd paid more attention in home ec.

"We ought to go to South Dakota soon," he says finally, baiting.

"Sure. Bobby'd let you stay." When Alex raises the pillow again, Evan bats it aside. "Seriously, man. It's not safe."

Alex shrugs. It's shorthand for this argument, everything he shouted about there being no safe anymore and that the Man would tear through any other hunters who got near them and that, if Evan kept trying to argue, Alex didn't want to bury anybody else. That last one was dirty pool but Evan wouldn't fight him on it, even in the first few days when Evan had packed all his weapons to go.

The sad thing is, Evan knows what the shrug means and that Alex's won. He flings his arm over his eyes, frustrated, then flops dramatically up the bed. "You want to flip for the bed?"

Alex looks at him. Waits for him to remember that he used his wallet chain to choke the Rake and Alex got his pocket picked in New Orleans.

Evan makes a face when his memory catches up, and prods Alex in the shoulder. "Fine. You stay on your fucking side this time."

Alex closes his eyes, not exactly agreeing, because Evan is the one who tends to curl them together like two puppies in a box.

They always leave the light on by mutual agreement. The sheets reek of the Rake's black stinking blood. Evan's still asleep in seconds.

Alex stays awake, eyes closed, listening for the sirens.


End file.
